If you were lucky enough to have a conversation with Marianne Faithfull in recent years, you dipped into another world for a good hour. She was mostly to speak by phone. No online call, no cell phone, always about the good old landline. Either they were called in Paris, where she spent a lot of time in the chic 6th arrondissement. Or, when she was on the road, in one of these hotels that have names like from Thomas Mann novels. If you registered there, it took a little while to ask her the first question. You first had to pass a few hierarchical instances: reception, telephone operator, assistant-and then Marianne Faithfull. With her deep, broken voice, the sound of which tells of a rock’n’roll life that has been incredibly unfair. That Marianne Faithfull had triumphed. Because she escaped hell. And in the end had many good years.
As a young woman, Marianne Faithfull was part of the Coffeehouse circle in London in the 1960s, where the folk scene met, analogous to Greenwich Village in New York. In 1964, she slipped to a party in 1964, where everyone who was considered cool at the time was guest. Poet, painter, rock musician. Among them the Rolling Stones. A few weeks later, 17 years old, she stood in a recording studio to sing a Jagger/Richards composition that was too lovely for the Stones. “As Tears Go By” became a hit, Marianne Faithfull was one of the few women in the boys’ club of the “British Invasion” wave. Later she reluctantly told about that time. Broke off interviews. Replied grumpy.
What is clear today: Marianne Faithfull, another teenager, was exploited, abused, left alone. Her affair with Mick Jagger was a huge topic for the press. With Jagger as a cool rocker. And Faithfull as a sinistre woman. The drugs took. Like everyone. Only she was accused because she was already a mother. The father of her child, the artist John Dunbar, were not blamed. They were also treated with artistic terms. Together with Jagger and Richards, she wrote the play “Sister Morphine”. For the release on the album Sticky Fingers, the Stones changed the text in a few places – and left the name Marianne Faithfull away from the credits. It only changed according to a court ruling in 1994.
The 1970s were a nightmare for Marianne Faithfull. She lost custody of her son, was ignored by the rock scene, had no means of fighting against her addiction. Finally she landed in the Soho district of London, where she lived as a junkie in lousy one -room apartments, even on the street for some time. It was the time when Marianne Faithfull lost her bell -clear voice – and received a new one. For the first time she was heard on her comeback album Broken English from 1979. An incredibly good, because infinitely sad and defiant record. With songs between Postpunk, Reggae and New Wave – the sound of the hour. The piece “Why d’Ara do it?” Is at the same time an explicit charges against the men’s world and a sign that Faithfull can no longer be made small: “Why did you do that?” – Marianne Faithfull wanted to answer!
Broken English was the starting point for her actual career. She reflected on her past on a few other albums, then closed these files, plunged into new projects. She made a name for herself as the interpreter of the songs by Bert Brecht and Kurt Weill, sang Dark Cabaret and art songs. When a new generation of bands appeared in the course of the alternative rock, Marianne Faithfull was rediscovered. Beck and Billy Corgan, Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker – they all worked with her. The album Kissin Time in particular from 2002 documented its strong position in the scene. Between the grandiose albums in the nineties, she played the role of her life in the cinema: “Irina Palm”, with Marianne Faithfull as a grandmother who never had the chance to live her own life. But this catches up with when she wants to make money for medical treatment for her grandson – as a sex worker who satisfies men in a club in Soho in the Glory Hole men. How she played this role, with wit and warmth, rightly brought her praise.
2021, which was in health, from the consequences of a Corona infection, she fulfilled a last artistic dream. Before that, she had worked intensively on albums such as negative capability from 2018 with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. On her last record She Walks in Beauty, she had Ellis composed spherical music to recite poems by Lord Byron, John Keats and other British poets. “She Walks in Beauty, Like The Night/ of Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies,” says Lord Byron’s poem. You can’t call for better lines: “She walks in beauty, such as the night/ cloudless realm and starry sky.”
Marianne Faithfull died on January 30th at the age of 78.